‘After Georgie’s disastrous divorce, they hatched a plan to oust me and turn your head. Georgie was amazingly always at your mother’s house visiting when you arrived. And even had to stay the night for any number of dubious reasons. How they plied you with drink. How she tiptoed into your room because she was feeling so lonely. They made it so easy for you to fail.’
Stephen is looking concerned now.
‘Did your mother tuck you both up in bed together?’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘The truth is often disgusting, that’s why no one bothers with it any more.’
‘I don’t believe you. I love Georgie. Yes, OK, maybe she worked hard to get close to me again, but that’s because she loves me.’
‘Your mother bought her the house in Highgate.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t Georgie mention that?’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ he says. ‘Georgie inherited her family’s estate, she doesn’t need money.’
‘I looked up Georgie’s house on the land registry, and it’s registered to Madeleine Rook. And there’s a nice section in her diary about her financial situation. All she inherited was debts. Three million pounds of debt, after mortgages, death duties, legal fees, and taxes.’
‘I’m not listening to you.’
‘Your mother even threatened to disinherit you if you remainedmarried to me, didn’t she? Your mother is a sociopath, and like all sociopaths she believes a successful marriage is one you can buy.’
‘You’re wrong about Georgie, you’re wrong about Mum. They’re right about you, you’re a lying bitch,’ he says, but the anger is gone from his voice. He’s realizing, I imagine, what it’s like to go from a frying pan to a cold bath.
‘Darling, your mother is selling you off to an impoverished aristocrat for a title. Your lover is more interested in money than you. I’m the only honest person in this relationship. It’s all in the diary. Read it for yourself. I’ve marked the interesting pages with Post-its.’
He pushes past me and says coldly, ‘I’m not reading it. I told her I wouldn’t and I won’t.’
Chapter76Bigamist
Sunday, 26 January
Nothing better than a Sunday morning run to contemplate the future. I do a circuit of Ally Pally to reflect on yesterday while Stephen takes the children out to the park. Hollis, despite his many faults, is a better option than Stephen, who is jobless, unfaithful, inadequate, and, it seems, quite without backbone.
I decide that I’ll have the children, despite their general inadequacies and neediness. I imagine Georgie doesn’t want them anyway. Baronetess Mallenberg is, no doubt, intending to repopulate her family line from scratch.
After I shower, I find Nelly alone in my office in the midst of a discarded hammer and splintered wood. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else in the house.
‘What are you doing here?’ I say.
‘I don’t like her,’ she says, drawing in one of my notebooks.
‘Who don’t you like?’ I peer over her shoulder. She’s drawn a rather good picture of a pretty and glamorous woman. I presume it’s me and am quite flattered.
‘We metherin the park,’ says Nelly, jabbing at the picture.
‘Who?’ I say.
‘Georgie,’ she says, almost spitting.
I want to take the hammer to Stephen’s head, but that will have to wait. I watch Nelly draw a succession of arrows hitting the woman in her chest and legs and face and am pleased that the picture is not of me.
‘Darling, what happened?’ I kneel and swivel her chair around. I hold her hands. They seem so small all of a sudden. ‘I’m your mummy. She’s just a nobody. Nothing to worry about.’
Nelly swivels back to her notebook, satisfied, draws another arrow right through Georgie’s heart and walks out with Dolly in her hand. I’m not sure the books on divorce advise such honest appraisals but it did feel deeply satisfying.
